In this article Megan Mathisen, a teacher of deaf and hard of hearing children at St. Anne Grade School in St. Anne, Illinois, describes her work with two boys in second grade and one boy in fifth grade who at the beginning of the school year had reading and language delays. After working with them, her second grade boys are now on grade level and…

The 1000 primary school students in this study included a minority population of nine deaf children. The underlying foundation of this mainstream environment allowed for accommodations, but only to the extent that the non-deaf majority was not overtly impacted. Explicit messages of equality and implicit notions of normal were often in conflict.…